Author Archives: Bill Hutchison

Ready to Pay At Least An Extra $250 for a Table Saw?

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In a lawsuit in the United States (where else eh?) this week a man was awarded $1.5 million USD for an injury to his fingers that was caused by a table saw. The man injured his fingers while using a Ryobi table saw when he was installing oak hard wood flooring in 2006.

The thing is, there was nothing wrong with the table saw. The table saw didn’t fail to function as designed, or break, or have anything wrong with it. The Ryobi table saw met all current safety standards. The problem was that is was not equipped with a flesh detection technology to stop the blade!

Personally I reckon the guy must have been an idiot who should never have been operating a table saw in the first place. Also the people on the jury must have never used power tools before, or something, because I really can’t understand how this could possibly have happened!

If the lawsuit sets a precedent then we can expect to see all table saws in the future equipped with flesh detection technology. This will probably add at least $250 to the cost of a low end table saw, and more to the higher end more expensive table saws.

I think that the flesh detection table saw, currently made by SawStop, is a cool invention. It would especially be suitable for wood working shop classes in school (we had a shop teacher at my old school cut off his fingers, not a good example). I don’t think though that it should be required on all table saws.

The cost is extremely prohibitive for the table saw technology. The additional cost for the flesh detection technology will be about $250.00. Not only that, but if the technology is triggered you will need to replace the brake mechanism and the blade. Unfortunately the mechanism can be triggered by something as simple as moist wood, which would cost you about $150 depending on the blade.

You can read more about the lawsuit and the flesh detection technology over at Pro Tool Reviews. Here is a video of the technology in action:

How Safe is the Foil Insulation in your Roof?

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Since the Australian Federal Government’s roof and ceiling insulation rebate program there have been four recorded deaths of insulation installers because of foil insulation coming into contact with live electrical wires and faults.

Generally speaking foil insulation in new houses is considered to be very safe. Installation in older houses however can be a problem …

Usually foil insulation is only used in new house installations. With the Australian Government’s $1200 rebate that they have been offering however there have been a large number of older homes having foil insulation installed in the ceilings. Some of the older houses have live electrical faults and when the foil insulation comes into contact with these faults, or staples are put through the electrical wires, the electrical current is then conducted throughout the foil insulation.

According to this article on ABC there are about 37,000 homes that have had foil insulation installed and according to an Australian Government audit five out of every 400 or so of those houses have “live ceilings”. They say that would mean about 400 – 500 houses in Australia right now are in a very dangerous situation.

On Tuesday the Australian government banned the use of foil insulation in their rebate program.

The only way to find out if a roof or ceiling with foil insulation is electrically live is for an electrician to be hired to test the installation, at the expense of the home owner. If the electrician finds that the foil insulation in live then they should be able to be compensated by the company that did the installation, otherwise for the moment they are out of pocket the expense of the electrical test.

Make Sure to Clean you Air Conditioner Filter

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Clean your dirty air conditioner filterWhen not in use Air Conditioners are an easy way for hot or cold air to escape from the house. In Australia we were usually worried about the cold air getting out, here in Canada it’s more of a worry of the cold air (-23C today) getting in.

Since I was up on the bench top checking out and closing the vents on the air conditioner I also had a look at the filter. Part of me wonders if that last owners even knew that it had a filter, given how dirty it was.

A dirty, clogged or blocked air filter on an air conditioner can be an energy hog and a safety risk. The air conditioner needs to work harder to draw air into the machine, which causes extra heat and an electricity drain.

To clean our filter, which you can see above, I’m going to hook up the vacuum cleaner and suck off the dry dust. If you are in a humid climate you may need to look at using bleach or vinegar to clean the filter if mould has started to form on the filter. Make sure to let it dry fully if you’re going to do that, as you don’t want to be drawing the fumes, or any liquid into the air conditioner.

Why So Quiet on Renovate Australia?

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If you are a regular reader of this site you might be wondering why things have been so quiet lately. Well, they say a picture is worth a thousands words so here you go …

sold-house-23

Yep, we finally finished most of the renovations, sold the house and moved.

Like our house renovations we don’t like to do things half way, so we didn’t do a small move, we actually moved to the other side of the world, Canada …

the-new-hutchison-home

I still have literally dozens, if not hundreds of stories from our time renovating our house in Townsville, Australia. I’m hoping to somehow find the time to record them on this site before I forget them, but at the moment my family and my work with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is taking up pretty much all of my time.

We purchased a house in Canada that we thought wouldn’t need much work, but of course that never works out quite as planned…